﻿Hey guys, I’m Kya,
and today on ‘Slash Course,’ we’re unwrapping the Mummy.
These embalmed antagonists have a lot more going on beneath the bandages than most movie maniacs,
and just like its titular terror,
Universal’s ‘Mummy’ franchise had been reincarnated a few times throughout the last century of cinema,
from Boris Karloff to Sofia Boutella.
But whether you’re battling Imhotep, Kharis, or Ahmanet,
we’re here to help you send them on their way to the afterlife.
So, summon some scarabs,
keep your kitty close,
and think of my children!
You don't have any children!
Someday I might...
Shut up!
Because this is
How to Kill The Mummy
Mummies...
Now, we should clarify that there was nothing nefarious about actual Ancient Egyptian mummies.
Death and the afterlife played a massive role in their religion,
they believed that in order for your Ka, or spirit, to make it to the great beyond,
it had to reunite with your perfectly preserved body, or Ba.
So, freshly dead Egyptians (the ones who could afford it, anyway) underwent a 70-day process,
that involved removing their organs and putting them in jars,
dehydrating their flesh,
and wrapping them in linen.
Like a really expensive after-you’re-dead spa treatment.
Mummies aren’t inherently frightening,
at least, no more than any other dead body,
but in the early 20th Century, a historic discovery ignited the world’s imagination,
and set the stage for the
O.G. Mummy
In 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter excavated the untouched tomb of the ancient Pharaoh known as Tutenkhamen,
also known as, King Tut.
Well, it was mostly untouched,
graverobbers had already pillaged the outer chambers,
but Carter and his crew, who definitely weren’t grave robbers because imperialism,
unsealed the inner sanctum,
and discovered the opulent tomb within.
The find sparked a Egyptology craze,
especially after people involved in raiding Tut’s tomb began dropping dead.
Today, the “curse” is “pretty much” confirmed to be “coincidence,”
but back then, it established mummies as magical, vengeful creatures,
the perfect subject for a horror movie.
In 1932, Universal released ‘The Mummy,’
the story of a priest named Imhotep who’s buried alive for trying to resurrect his dead lover, Anck Su Namun.
When explorers discover his tomb, one of them inadvertently awakens the mummy by reading from the Scroll of Thoth,
then promptly goes insane.
Ten years later, an incognito Imhotep finds his former love,
reincarnated as a modern half-Egyptian woman named Helen.
The mummy attempts to kill her in the hopes of resurrecting Helen as his immortal bride,
but when she recovers the memory of her past life,
she prays to the goddess Isis,
who sets the Scroll aflame,
causing Imhotep to crumble into dust.
The image of a shambling, slow moving mummy in bandages is attributed to the original film,
but that’s not really how he’s portrayed in the movie,
aside from one brief scene,
we mostly see Imhotep as wrinkly Boris Karloff wearing a fez.
It’s the string of sequels that cemented the classic image in our minds,
even though it’s a completely different creature.
'The Mummy's Hand' more or less tells the exact same story,
only this time it’s a man called Kharis who’s brought back by drinking a tea made from the sacred tana leaves.
In the modern day, he tries to share a cup with his crush,
but he perishes when his bandages are set ablaze.
Fire is pretty damn effective against mummies,
just ask Elvis and JFK from ‘Bubba Ho Tep.’
Sorry, man.
They’re crunchy, dried out corpses wrapped in cloth,
basically kindling, so sparking them up is a surefire way to stop them.
Kharis starred in a bunch of increasingly low-budget ‘Mummy’ movies,
and frankly, the deaths aren’t really worth talking about,
because I’m way past ready to talk about the 1999 series,
which, in my mind, is
The Actual Classic
Believe it or not, you have ‘Babe: Pig in the City’ to thank for the amazing ‘Mummy’ reboot.
You're just a little pig in the big city! What can you possibly do?!
What can anyone do?!
The swine sequel was a massive bomb,
so Universal changed course and capitalized on their beloved old IP instead,
starting with ‘The Mummy.’
That'll do, Brendan Fraser. That'll do.
They approached nearly every horror director in Hollywood,
from Clive Barker to George Romero,
but the studio ended up going with Stephen Sommers,
who took the series away from its origins in fright films,
and turned it into a rollicking adventure in the style of ‘Indiana Jones.’
Despite the genre shift, the plot is actually pretty close to the original,
just amped up to eleven.
This time, Imhotep’s forbidden love Anck-su-Namun is already spoken for,
she’s the Pharaoh's mistress, and when their affair is discovered they commit some good old fashioned regicide.
Anck-su-Namun kills herself, confident that her lover will resurrect her,
but before he can get the chance, Imhotep is captured and forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai,
where his tongue is cut out,
and he’s buried alive with a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs.
The fact that Anck-su-Namun was so ready to kill herself because she's like "It's okay, my boy got me,"
and then the second she dies he's like "actually, I don't got you, I messed up, and you're gonna have to wait a couple centuries."
I would have been sitting in the afterlife like "no, it's fine, my boyfriend's coming."
And then I'm like "it's been 500 years and he's still not here, I think we have to break up."
Our unlikely heroes, an aspiring Egyptologist name Evelyn and… whatever the heck Rick is,
accidently awaken the undead creature in 1921,
I've never seen a mummy look like this before, he's still...
JUICY.
Yes!
and compared to the classic version, Imhotep gets a massive power upgrade.
Sure, he’s utterly terrified of cats, since they’re guardians of the underworld and all,
but once he fully reforms his body, he can control the desert sands,
and unleash biblical plagues.
I love the whole sand wall trick, it was beautiful... bastard...
He’s pretty much unkillable,
he even managed to resurrect the mummified corpse of his lost love,
at least, temporarily.
Once our heroes get their hands on the Book of Amun-Ra,
they turn his mummy goons against her,
and undo the curse that gave Imhotep immortality.
With the playing field leveled,
Rick stabs him in the gut and sends him plummeting into a pool of death.
Imhotep swears he’ll get his revenge, and he wouldn’t have to wait long,
the Mummy returned two years later in, well, ‘The Mummy Returns,’
when he’s resurrected by an evil cult that hopes to use his power to defeat the Scorpion King.
Among its members is a reincarnated Anck-su-Namun,
and together, the star-crossed lovers plot the defeat of the most electrifying antagonist in Ancient Egypt.
But once the army of Anubis is raised, the god of the dead himself strips Imhotep of his power,
forcing him to be mortal when he goes one on one with the great one.
After a thrilling battle featuring timeless special effects,
Imhotep is touched by the sacrifices Rick and Evelyn are willing to make for their relationship,
and devastated when Anck-su-Namun won’t do the same for him.
He willingly casts himself into a chasm that leads straight to the underworld,
she accidentally falls into a nasty pit of scorpions,
and the Scorpion King would somehow go on to star in five more movies.
Meanwhile, the final entry in the ‘Mummy’ trilogy switches things up,
exchanging Egyptian mythology for Ancient China in the ‘Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,’
and while Jet Li’s Emperor Han is a fearsome foe,
he falls to the same cursed dagger he once used to attack the sorceress who gave him immortality.
What a dummy.
What an ingrate!
It’s a solid enough movie,
and with this cast, it’s impossible not to be charmed,
but after its disappointing box office,
and the rise of the MCU,
Universal cancelled their planned sequel starring Antonio Band--
Hehehe... I didn't know about this... Antonio Banderas as an ancient Aztec mummy!
Yes! I'd pay money to see that!
[Antonio Banderas howling]
Universal cancelled their planned sequel starring Antonio Banderas as an ancient Aztec mummy,
and decided to reboot their classic IPs into an extremely
Dork Universe
What the hell?
In the wake of Marvel’s success, every studio sitting on an old IP tried to shoehorn it into a shared cinematic universe,
from board games to British legend,
and Universal was no different.
It wasn’t their first attempt to reunite their family of famous monsters,
but ‘The Mummy’ makes ‘Monster Squad’ look like ‘The Dirty Dozen’ by comparison.
See you later, Band-Aid breath!
On the surface, it’s pretty much your typical Tom Cruise movie,
I'm sorry, okay?
Not okay!
he plays a U.S. Army operative who stumbles across the tomb on Ahmanet,
a princess was mummified alive for killing her royal family,
and trying to summon Set, the god of chaos.
Her curse manifests as our heroes try to steal her sarcophagus,
she possesses Tom Cruise’s best friend,
and sends our hero to a screaming death in a plane crash.
He gets better though,
while Ahmanet does the standard Mummy M.O. of sucking up other people’s life to rebuild her body.
It's old and played out, honey.
After another boring battle,
the whole gang is captured by the Prodigium,
the pathetic SHIELD wannabe led by Dr. Jekyll.
While the Mummy herself is sedated by some mercury,
we get a whole bunch of exposition about dark forces and gods and monsters and blah-de-blah,
Satan. Lucifer
The devil.
Quite so.
Got it.
along with a bunch of lame references that are supposed to make you elbow your buddy
in theater and go “dude, Dracula! Can you believe we’re getting a DRACULA movie?!”
After a pointless battle with Mr. Hyde, the Mummy escapes,
and demands the ancient dagger that can bring about Set’s return.
But Cruise stabs himself with it instead,
becomes possessed by the god,
and plants a kiss on the Mummy that sucks out her soul and returns her to the grave.
I heard that usually happens when you kiss Tom Cruise, so I don't know why they were surprised...
Don't put that in there.
That’s all well and good, but if you want to know how to kill the Mummy,
just make a really bad movie,
cram in a bunch of embarrassing shared universe nonsense,
and lose 95 million dollars.
The studio has put their shared universe plans on hold for now,
and just like DC, they’re going back to the drawing board to tell smaller, stranger stories,
starting with Elizabeth Moss as the Invisible Woman.
I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the undead, all-powerful Mummy,
but for now, I think we should keep the series under wraps.